Stop hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself?

19 February 2016

By Rick de Klerk

Street Fighter V, right now, is a complete joke. It’s akin to calling yourself a “street fighter” because you once got mugged in the street and at some point the perp punched you in the face. To liken it to its older siblings and mix in some development jargon, it’s more Street Fighter Alpha IV than Street Fighter V.

Online play is a disaster, which is particularly egregious for a title that’s sacrificed almost its entire single-player portion to the Post-Release Gods. The “offline” features are barebones and, hilariously, are subject to the same server issues. To me the artwork is… questionable, and not because of any puritanical sensibilities: it’s inconsistent, occasionally sketchy… and yes, neither waists nor hands work that way. That it’s done by Capcom veteran Bengus, well-known for stellar pieces, points not to a failure in basic anatomical comprehension, but instead to the game being rushed.

Now, none of the above comes as a surprise – Capcom have been telegraphing all the features they’re stripping out for launch while promising forthcoming updates in the coming months. Right now though, they’re exactly that: promises. And maybe, just maybe, the time for paying for promises has reached its nadir. With unhappiness around Street Fighter V growing, Jason Evangelho of Forbes has singled out “irresponsible reviews” of the game – and it’s hard to disagree with him when he matches up largely negative excerpts from day-before-launch tracts with their contradictory 8+ scores and overly-lenient caveats.

But I also feel he’s putting a lot of value in us ol’ press. Because we’ve done a poor job of covering games, reviewing games, remaining relevant. And it shows: when it comes to deciding whether or not they’re going to buy a game, the large majority – and, dear reader, I’d be happy to be corrected in this instance – don’t care what value a publication sticks on it, so his suggestion that reviews should be based on experience after launch rather than before is noble and practical, but ultimately ineffectual. You might turn to a writer to find out whether it’s interesting or sensational… but worth purchasing? You’ve probably already bought it.

This problem is twofold. The first is that as far as criticism is concerned, we’re sometimes weak-kneed contrarians scared to give a game a proper dressing down (unless, of course, everyone else does, in which case you get heelaareeyus takedowns), which has resulted in the 7-10 review scale and a media landscape where you can’t tell your Polygons from your Edges unless they deviate from the Metacritic mean. In which case they’re clickbaiters, obviously. Right? Which brings us to the other problem, which is you.

Yes, you. Pre-ordered a game recently? Propped up some developer’s never-ending Early Access trust fund? Gloat that you do neither and instead pirate all your games for 50-hour-plus “demo” purposes? It’s on you. Not so much on the pirates in this case, though they’re just as crappy for different reasons. I feel like a Warner Brother’d record because this despair rolls up ’round Feb like a clipping fog; I’m just going to quote from the opinion piece I wrote last year, roughly about the same time:

“Gamers are the ones with the real power to make a difference in this circus of failed launches, buggy releases, unrequited promises and nickel-and-diming pre-order frenzies. Instead of harrumphing with snide remarks and petty digs at how gamers will just accept any coverage these days, I ask you simply to consider that the system is broken; that when developers embargo launch-day reviews, or prevent access to information, or partition content into slivers of DLC, or sponsor gameplay sessions for the purposes of marketing, their contempt is aimed at you.”

“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”

I don’t know how to make it clearer. Given the incredible number of forum threads and comment sections with various renditions of “nevah ah-gin” every time this happens, I’m not going to feign outrage that Capcom can release a game that they’ve stripped of content to focus on online multiplayer (which STILL DOESN’T WORK PROPERLY) and waists the thickness of wafers in this, the Year of the Monkey, 2016.

Capcom deserves lambasting, but they’ve launched Street Fighter V in this state because they don’t give a flyer what the gaming press has to say, and because gamers lap it up. The press forgives it (like Jason’s compatriot Ollie Barder, who suggests in another Forbes article that the poor server performance is not Capcom’s fault because any sufficiently advanced netcode is indistinguishable from magic and they couldn’t have possibly known what they were getting into, since it’s not like they had ample beta test data to draw from) in the reviews while criticising it in the news. And there’s a real argument to be made for misleading reviews when there are people who actually do put their trust in certain writers to inform them of issues.

We must love it, because we’ve demonstrated a Sisyphean pleasure in paying for games long before we even have access to them. Publishers and developers have decreed that we’ll push that rock up to the top of a hill — a rock preordained to roll back down before it gets there for all eternity — and by the gods we’re not the sort of casual scrubs who’ll shirk from their challenge.

I agree. On a slightish related note: I’ve stopped buying games no matter the deal and how much i want it. I’m finishing all my backlog. I believe more people should do the same. Might improve the situation a little. We must all do our part 😛

LazyDemoni

This was a good read, you should write more.

Rick de Klerk

Hey, thanks! Nice of you to say.

Ray

I’ve trusted NAG reviews since I started reading it in 2007 and I’m not going to stop now. I’m one of the few of my friends who always, ALWAYS, waits for reviews before buying my games. I believe it’s 100% fair to review a game before launch because I want to know the state the game is in the moment I pop that disc in my drive. I don’t care if it “will be” fixed or if it “will get better”, I don’t fork out money for broken and incomplete games.

Rick de Klerk

A Neogaf poster said that SFV is, “A great game and a terrible product”, which is spot-on. I think post-launch reviews would make for better product reviews, while pre-launch reviews… don’t offer much more except to those looking to pre-order. Pre-orders are useful because they give a publishers a rough idea of the amount of physical product they have to deploy and the numbers they can expect hitting their network infrastructure, but that doesn’t help the poor sap who’s out R720 and keeps getting booted from the server.

Some reviewers tend to be lenient when it comes to technical issues and glitches because they can usually be overcome with time and patches, whereas a terrible game is much harder to fix. Should Witcher 3, for example, take a knock on its scores because it failed to launch with some of the promised language options, rolled out a couple of days later? It’s one of the issues reviewers wrestle with.

Lauren Hayward

Demos were gone before I even started gaming as a serious pastime. Even so, I’ll speak with my head up my ass and say times were better when demos were widely spread. These days they’re called betas’ and the worst is SF HAD a beta. Why weren’t people complaining then?

Also, I’m a terrible slagoffer of the R100 off if you pre-order. Geld is geld.

Jaco Liebenberg

I actually laughed when I began to read the article, because I kind of expected SFV to fail like this, just like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 did, because this is the day & age we find ourselves in, of rushed, incomplete & buggy games, which cost an arm & a leg, for every separate piece you have to fork out a dollar to. Luckily I’m very picky about what games I pay for, and I haven’t once paid for something I didn’t love (except GOWUE. I’m sorry but that game for me was crap, so sue me. But that’s a story for another fire). Halo MCC I bought because I wanted to experience the Legend when I got my first Xbox last October, and I loved every bit of it. And yes, Halo 2 was the best. Mad Max I paid for with R720 of my hard earned (and saved) money, and I’m still enjoying every minute in the wasteland. Forza 6 I got together with above mentioned Xbox One, the blue limited edition, which I’m still actively playing every day, even being part of an online racing group (although Turn 10 Studios must seriously fix the multiplayer). And then there’s The Division, which I did pre-order, because they had and incredible Alpha, and both closed & open Betas, and I simply cannot wait for launch day.

But my point is, I didn’t just buy these games because of marketing and hype. I did extensive “research” into them all (except GOWUE, that was pure hype and it cost me dearly). Many hours of gameplay footage and reveiws has been watched, with more reviews read, before I made my choice. Sure they are not all very complete games, but which games are really? But one thing they have in common, is that I got the experience I was expecting, and paid for, because of reviews.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, thanks. Thanks for all the reviewers out there, good & bad, because you give us all a clearer indication whether or not a particular game will suck.

Coen De Bruin

I have gone the following route since cash on new games is scarce. I will only buy a new game if i play the beta and like it. So for now i am just waiting for TC The Division. That beta was great.

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